AND LAKE ONTARIO AREA
(Courtesy of Cathy Laughlan)
NIAGARA FALLS GAZETTE
September 22, 1965, Pg. 28
"Many Report Seeing 2 UFOs"
Dozens of persons Tuesday night watched two unidentified flying objects moving and hovering over this area for almost an hour.
The objects, bright lights which changed color were below the cloud level and remained at a fairly low level during most of the period they were observed. Observers said the objects were not helicopters or conventional aircraft. At one point, at about 8 p.m., the two objects, which had been widely separated when viewed earlier, approached each other on a collision course until the "teamed up" and moved off close together toward Buffalo.
The light first was seen on the Canadian side of the river at a point opposite Lewiston. It moved slowly up-river below low-hanging clouds.
After leaving this area one of the UFO's was spotted over Alden by two observers, Roselle Simon, 12268 Blossom Lee Drive and Leonard Butler, 12275 Blossom Lee Drive, who called the state police at Clarence.
Trooper John Riehl reported that he saw the light (which seemed to him to be light reflecting from a metallic surface of a globe). He said that it first moved in a northwest direction, then in a southwest direction at varying speeds.
UFOs were seen over Niagara Falls by a Gazette reporter and his two children.
It had no "running" or "warning lights," as required of aircraft.
As the object passed over North Tonawanda, moving slowly, it was watched for almost half an hour by V. D. Price, an employe [sic], this city, and by his foreman at American Standard Division, working in the yard.
His foreman, Raymond Bright, said he never missed an oportunity [sic] to watch satellites passing overhead.
"This was not a satellite. Satellites travel in straight lines and within a few minutes they are gone.
"This hung around in the sky for about half on hour. It would move off in one direction and then stop. Then it would change direction and move off again. It was headed generally toward Cheektowaga, I'd say."
He said that the object did not appear to glow, rather it seemed to be shining brightly as if with reflected sunlight.
"It wasn't too long after sunset, so it must have been high enough to catch direct sunlight," he said.
The Niagara Falls Air Force Base said that it had no knowledge of UFOs in the area Tuesday night.
At the Federal Aviation Agency's control tower at the Niagara Falls International Airport, no report of Tuesday's sighting was recorded by the night crew. However, one of the controllers reported he had spotted a UFO the night before.
Probably the most famous and controversial UFO sighting occurred here on the night of Nov. 9, 1965 seconds before lights began flickering and failing all the way from the Adam Beck power plant at Queenston, Ont. to New York City. [My Note: The Adam Beck power plant in Queenston is located directly across the Niagara River from the Robert Moses power plant in Lewiston, New York, just outside of the City of Niagara Falls.
(Readers may recall the great Northeastern power failure of 1965, and other articles I will be posting make reference to the sightings of an object above the Adam Beck plant that day. c.zylka)
The great northeast power blackout officially was blamed on a faulty relay in the Ontario Hydro switchyard at Queenston but other persons, mainly members of the Massachusetts unit of the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena, said it was caused by visitors from space.
There were many sightings minutes before the blackout of a strange object hovering near the Beck plant.
A crewman aboard a cargo plane landing at the Niagara Falls International Airport and an observer on the grownd saw the strange object.
So did a number of other persons, although at the time an Ontario Hydro official denied anybody told them of the sightings. Several years later a Hydro official confirmed that sightings were noted by hundreds of persons.
At the time, power officials said no conditions were prevalent that could have caused a corona discharge or arcing between power lines that may have been mistaken for a UFO.
The observer on the cargo plane saw what he described as a glowing mass over the power station.
It looked like a huge barn fire and was rising and just at that time the lights began to flicker on the ground. Before the plane came to a halt on the runway, the blackout was on.
Did UFOs above the plant suck out energy from the plant to replenish their depleting supplies, thus precipitating the blackout? Three years later, in April of 1968, weird lights were seen again over the Beck station.
At about 2:15 a.m. on April 2, three Niagara Falls police officers watching from Lewiston Road and Hyde Park Boulevard observed pulsating lights for nearly an hour.
"They were like something I have never seen before," said one of the officers, Patrolman Thomas Shumway.